The Influence Of The Jesuits' Acculturation Policy To Chinese Scholar-bureaucrat In Late Ming Dynasty And Early Qing Dynasty

The conflict and the assimilation of different culture is the core of the cultural communication. The force and the counterforce from the conflict and the assimilation made both of them change. The degree of this dissimilation has been lied on the strength of this culture.The core ethic of Chinese civilization is Confucianism. This civilization has huge energy and comprehension in thousands years. The Buddhism is a foreign religion. It has also been assimilated by Chinese culture for a long time, and the Zen has been founded. The Confucianism has also adopted some thoughts of Buddhism and Taoism. So, a new culture has been formed.Roman Curia had to reform their doctrine to retort the huge threat from Protestantism. The Jesuits was founded in this reformation era, and took on the important outspread mission. After the new sea-lane was found, these Jesuits came to Confucian Culture Circle in east Asia which believe in Confucianism. They couldn't use the army to force native people converted to Catholicism because China was still strong at that time, so they had to change their policy. Francis Xavier was a pioneer, he tried to missionize with the acculturation policy. Matteo Ricci summarized the experiences of Xavier, and founded an new missionary policy which was use Confucian classical philosophy to explain Catholicism. He believed this policy could make many Chinese scholar-bureaucrat convert to Catholicism. All of Matteo Ricci's successors such as Giulio Aleni, Jeao Monteiro, J. A. Schall von Bell, Ferdinand Verbiest, Joachim Bouvet, conformed to his policy in about hundred years later. This policy made drastic reaction in Chinese scholar-bureaucrat. One of scholar-bureaucrat opposed Buddhism and Taoism, asserted pragmatism. They agreed with Jesuits' theory, believed that Catholicism was a truth for prosperity. Some of them converted to Catholicism. The other scholar-bureaucrat still believed in Confucianism. They thought that Jesuits' theory plagiarized from Confucian classical books, and they worried about Catholicism's rapid development. After the Ming Dynasty was end, more and more scholar-bureaucrat found the big different of Confucianism and Catholicism. Scholar-bureaucrat couldn't change their religion easily at that time. Even though some of them in favor of west technology, but they can't give up their religion. The Jesuits' acculturation policy was actually a makeshift, it couldn't be supported by Vatican. Even though the relation of China and Vatican was broken, but Jesuits' theory still influenced the Confucian Culture Circle. The theories of Qing Dynasty were enlightened by some west culture which were communicated by Jesuits. These data are still good for the communication of west and east culture, we can also find some rules from them.